Broken Read online

  “I’ve seen her three times since then.” His voice wasn’t defiant, nor smug, only matter-of-fact. “I’m seeing her again tonight.”

  I swallowed my response like it was a spider, bitter and sick-making. When I said nothing, Joe straightened his body on the bench again. A soft breeze lifted the end of his tie. He crossed long legs, his trousers pulling up to show dark, patterned socks. The intimacy of seeing the bump of his anklebone was too much, and I had to look away.

  “Why didn’t you fuck her, Joe?”

  He looked at me again. “Because she’s different.”

  His description of her appearance, their conversation, the way she smelled, all had told me this woman was not the same as the dozen others he’d shared with me. He’d spoken of others with more admiration. More lust. Even some with more enthusiasm.

  But until today, he’d never admitted to dating any of them.

  “Don’t you want to know why she’s different?”

  I shook my head. “No, Joe. I don’t.”

  He looked away from the emptiness of the path in front of us. I gave a tiny shrug, a little raise of brow and tilt of lip. He ran his fingers through his hair and scrubbed at his eyes, made a disgruntled groan and got up.

  A young mother holding a child by the hand crossed the path in front of us. The boy toddled with determination, almost falling once but deftly caught by his mother. Joe and I both watched them until they rounded the corner and disappeared.

  “Have a good time tonight.”

  I sounded so sincere I almost convinced myself I meant it. I wasn’t so sure I convinced Joe, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded and walked away.

  “He looks like you.” I studied the tiny, wrinkled face of the infant in Katie’s arms.

  Katie, face drawn with exhaustion, smiled. “Gee, thanks. You’re saying I look like a bald old man?”

  “Of course not. But he has your nose.” I touched the sleeping fuzzy head. “When are Mom and Dad coming back?”

  “Evan had to go in to work for a few hours, so they’ll bring Lily in from pre-school. About an hour.”

  “I should go, then. Let you get some rest.”

  “Sadie—”

  I looked up from my examination of my new nephew. “Hmm?”

  “Do you want to hold him? I have to pee.”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  We made the trade. Katie got out of bed gingerly and disappeared into the bathroom. I stared down at my armful of infant.

  James Trevor Harris had ten perfect little fingers and toes, and a rosebud mouth, pursed now, perhaps in dreams of milk. He had perfect golden lashes shut over sweet, smooth cheeks. He had perfect little brows, furrowed a bit in the effort of existence outside the womb. Everything about him was perfection.

  He startled when my tear dropped onto his small face, but didn’t wake. I wiped it away before it could slide down his forehead to his cheek. His skin felt like rose petals. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and I held mine in anticipation of a wail that didn’t come.

  “You don’t have to leave before Mom and Dad get here,” Katie said quietly. She got into bed with a wince and a groan. “You know they’re going to want to see you.”

  “I know.” I didn’t want to be there, though, to watch them fussing over Katie. Simple and selfish, but true.

  Katie gave a weary laugh. “Sure. Abandon me to the smothering. Thanks a lot.”

  “You’ll live. Maybe they’ll focus on James.” I returned her son to her arms. “He’s beautiful.”

  Katie smiled, lost in contemplation of her son. “He is.”

  “Congratulations.”

  She looked up. “You sure you have to go?”

  “I do, actually, I have to—”

  “Get back to Adam. I know.” She nodded. “Okay.”

  I hugged them both, mother and son, and slipped away.

  “Everything looks good, but we’ll need to keep an eye on that pressure sore starting on his left buttock.” The visiting nurse was new and borderline manic. She smiled so fiercely it looked like she was baring her teeth instead of grinning, and I thought, she must be new to this.

  “I’m over here.” Adam’s didn’t waste his efforts trying to sound falsely genial.

  The nurse turned to look at him. He gave her a harder version of the grin I fell in love with. It was like watching a puppet with my husband’s face. The same expressions but slightly off.

  “Beg your pardon?” She had to be new, unless she was just one of those irritating caregivers who should know better but insist on thinking spinal cord injury means brain damage.

  “I’m over here. You can address me.” He was in his chair, as he preferred to be when the homecare assistants came. It was because it made him feel more in control of what was going on.

  The nurse turned to him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Danning. As I was saying to your wife, everything looks good, but we’ll have to—”

  “I did hear you,” Adam said, impatient. “The first time.”

  I said nothing. I was there to observe and make note of this one small piece of the immeasurable amount of care he needed on a daily basis. I was there because it was my job as his wife to know what was going on with his health, even though the nurse’s breezy, tossed-aside commentary only served to make me more anxious than ever.

  She seemed chastened. “I’m sorry.”

  Adam was entirely out of sorts, and she didn’t know him well enough to realize when it was a good time to leave him alone. She blathered on for another few minutes about matters so basic I didn’t blame him for being insulted she felt she had to instruct him upon them.

  “My accident was more than four years ago,” he told her, voice dripping with sarcasm when she explained for the second time how it was important for him to drain his bladder every four to six hours. “I know all about how to piss through a tube.”

  “Well, all righty then,” I broke my silence to say in a bright tone I could see set his teeth on edge. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Carter, but I think I can take it from here.”

  Bless her do-gooding heart, she still didn’t get it. She kept chirping as merrily and irritatingly as a parakeet about bowel programs and intermittent catheters as I escorted her down the stairs and out the front door. I bid her goodbye on the front porch and shut the door against her unfailingly cheerful advice.

  I didn’t mean to be rude, but she’d put Adam into a bad mood. A brilliant mind trapped in a body that doesn’t work the way it should leads to inventive cruelty. He couldn’t hit out with his fists, so he lashed out with his tongue, instead.

  I heard him cursing before I entered the room. I was almost a coward and didn’t go in, but Dennis wouldn’t be on duty for another few hours, and I had no choice. Adam needed me, much to his disgust and my despair.

  As if he heard me outside the door, he stopped muttering, and I went inside. He had his face turned away, toward the window. Bars of late afternoon sunlight striped his cheeks.

  “Don’t have her back again,” he said.

  “All right. I’ll make sure.”

  “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

  “I know that.” I was never sure what to do for him when he was like that. In the past. I’d have left him alone to work it out, but I couldn’t leave him alone now. Even if I left the room, he’d be calling me back in a few minutes to help him with something. Sometimes, maliciously.

  “Do you want some lunch?”

  He grunted an answer that I took to be yes.

  “Anything in particular?”

  Another grunt. I didn’t push. I made sure the intercom was working and clipped the monitor to my pocket before going downstairs to fix him some food.

  Marriages fail all the time from lesser disruptions than the unexpected disability of a spouse. It takes work and compromise to keep even an untested marriage strong, and ours was anything but untested.

  When Adam had his accident I was working part-time as a junior counselor at a college health center u